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a quarter. Upper-parts greenish olive-brown, with a dull whitish supercilium; chin, and generally the medial portion of the throat, with the belly and lower tail-coverts, white; breast and flanks brownishfulvous, brighter in old males; the throat and fore-neck streaked laterally with olivaceous, which in some specimens crosses the breast above the fulvous hue, and is more or less ashy; others again, evidently the old males, have the entire crown and neck all round, of a dusky-ash colour, mingled with white on the middle of the throat. Bill dusky above, the basal two-thirds of the lower mandible yellow; and legs pale brown. The wings of this species are firm and acuminate, and the tail also is firm. It inhabits the eastern coast of the Bay of Bengal, from Arracan to the Straits of Malacca, becoming more numerous southward; and M. Drapiez mentions having received it from Java, where it is a periodical visitant, and named (as he informs us) Striée.

11. T. unicolor, Tickell, J. A. S. II, 577; also of Gould, P. Z. S. 1837, p. 136. Length about nine inches, of wing four inches and fiveeighths, and tail three and a half; bill to gape above an inch; and tarse exceeding an inch and one-sixteenth. Colour uniform dark ashy above, paler below, and passing to white on the belly and lower tail-coverts; a tinge of rufous on the fore-part of the wing underneath. Bill yellow; and legs duller yellow. Capt. Tickell describes the female to be "dirty-grey, mixed on the back with olive, tinged on the head with brown. Wings and tail brownish; coverts of tail iron-grey; breast isabella-grey, belly white." What Mr. Gould describes as the young, appears to me to be the female of the next species: and he also states the bill and legs to be livid fuscous: the length of wing he gives, "three inches and a quarter," must be a misprint for five and a quarter; though that would exceed, by more than half an inch, the length of wing of the only specimen before me. The species inhabits the Himalaya chiefly,

but occurs sometimes in central India.

12. T. dissimilis, nobis: T. unicolor et T. modestus, nobis, passim, as in XI, 460, &c.: Calcutta Thrush, Latham, the female. This bird, as well as the preceding one, is very closely allied to the succeeding group, Geocichla; and the mature male of the present species has the whole under-parts from the breast, except the medial line of the belly and the lower tail-coverts, which are pure white, of the same bright ferruginous colour as in G. citrinus, G. cyanotus, &c.

An approach to the same colouration is exhibited by old males of T. rufulus. The female, however, shews no sign of this except on the axillaries, and on more or less of the under-surface of the wing: yet, before obtaining the male, I had perceived the affinity of this species for the Geocichla; and it is curious that I procured some eight or ten in the feminine plumage (whether all females, however, I cannot say, for some were only skins), before I succeeded in getting a male, which, as I all along suspected, proved to be clad in not quite so homely a garb as his mate. The male is, indeed, rather a handsome Thrush. Length nine inches, by fourteen and a quarter in spread of wing; closed wing four and a half; tail three and oneeighth; bill to gape an inch and one-eighth; tarse the same. Colour of the upper-parts plain olive-brown in both sexes, with ashy beneath the surface of the feathers, tending a little to predominate about the rump; throat, middle of belly, and lower tail-coverts, white; the sides of the throat with dusky linear spots, more or less diffused, and some often appearing in the middle; breast light olive-brown, with a few dusky spots, sometimes small and triangular, sometimes larger and more linear; and the flanks spotless olive-brown in the female, and perhaps in the juvenescent male, but in the old male bright ferruginous, spreading to the white medial line of the abdoBeak dusky, with generally some intermixture of yellow; and legs bright yellowish-brown. As in the Geocichla, the bill of a fresh specimen of this species is usually much clotted with mud; and the bird, like them, is mostly seen on the ground, hopping about among the underwood. It is not rare in Lower Bengal during the cold season. Mr. Jerdon has lately obtained it in the south: and it often occurs in collections from the Himalaya.

men.

Geocichla, Kuhl.

13. G. cyanotus, (Jardine and Selby), Ill. Orn., 1st series, pl. XLVI. Common in the Indian peninsula.

14. G. citrina, (Lath.): Turdus Macei, Vieillot; T. lividus, Tickell, J. A. S. II, 577; T. rubecula apud Horsfield, P. Z. S. 1839, p. 161. Bengal, Nepal, Assam, Arracan, Central India. A very common species. The young, received from Darjeeling, has the upper-parts dull olive, with a pale rufescent central streak to each feather; head and neck dull rufous, the feathers centred brighter, except towards the fore

head; under-parts light rufescent, deeper on the breast; and wings and tail as in the adult, but the feathers centred and margined with rufous.

G. innotata, nobis, n. s. Resembles G. citrina, but has the ferruginous colour of the head and under-parts, and the ash-colour of its upper-parts, much more intense; no white upon the wings; and the lower tail-coverts only (not the vent) are white. From the Malayan Peninsula. What I take to be two females of the same species, from the Nicobar Islands, have the throat white, and some white at the sides of the vent; the wings, rump, and tail, only, are deep ashy, the back and scapularies being olive-green, much as in the female of G. citrina. These are also smaller than the Malayan bird, the wing being but four inches, and the rest in proportion; whereas the Malayan (supposed) male has the wing four inches and a half. Should the Nicobar bird prove distinct, it might stand as G. albogularis, nobis.

G. rubecula, Gould, P. Z. S. 1836, p. 7. It is not very clear, from Mr. Gould's description of this Javanese species, in what it differs from G. citrina; except that he states the tarse to be an inch and a half long, instead of one and a quarter, and that the tail is but two inches and a half, instead of three inches; but from the difference of locality, it will most likely prove to be distinct. Four well marked species of this group are, as Mr. Gould informs us, in the Zoological Society's Museum; and T. rufovariegatus, Drapiez, Dict. Class. d'Hist. Nat. X, 465, would seem to belong to it.

Merula, Ray.

15. M. Wardii, Jerdon, J. A. S. XI, 882; Jerdon's Ill. Ind. Orn., pl. VIII. The bird described and figured as above, is the male. The female is very differently coloured, and a specimen was sent by Mr. Hodgson by the name Oreocincla? micropus. The Society has also since received a female from Southern India, and a male from Almorah; so that all doubt is removed concerning the identity of the Himalayan bird with that of Travancore, &c. The sexes of this species present the usual diversity observable in most of the black Merles, (as the British M. vulgaris, &c.), only somewhat further carried out; and this particular difference of the sexes confirms the propriety of its allocation in Merula, which group, as I formerly remarked, it tends to connect with Oreocincla. The male is black, with white eye-streak

and under-parts from the breast, except the feathers of the flanks which are only margined with white; and, besides a white wing-patch under the scapularies, the wing-coverts and tertiaries are tipped with the same, and the secondaries and middle tail-feathers, with the upper tail-coverts, more slightly, the rest of the tail-feathers being successively more deeply so tipped, increasing in amount to the outermost. The female has the upper-parts brown instead of black, with slight whitish tips to the upper tail-coverts, and less white on the tail-feathers, which is also less pure; the wing-coverts are each tipped with a triangular spot of fulvous-white, and the tertiaries more slightly; the supercilium is also fulvous-white, and the entire under-parts, except the lower tail-coverts which are purer white, a little variegated with dusky; while the feathers of the throat, breast, and flanks, are each tipped with a transverse dusky spot, more or less triangular on those of the breast; axillaries chiefly pure white: bill and legs yellowish. In fact, if we except the eye-streak and the mottlings of the wings and tail, and also its smaller size, the female of this species resembles a good deal a pale and spotted-breasted hen English Blackbird. It seems to be far from being a common species in this country, though met with from the Himalaya to Travancore.

16. M. boulboul; Lanius boulboul, Lath.: Turdus pœcilopterus, Vigors, P. Z. S. 1831, p. 54; Gould's Century, pl. XIV. The black of this species is never so uniformly deep as in the European Blackbird, the under-parts of the old male being more or less brownish: in younger males, there is also a brown tinge above; the rump and upper tail-coverts incline to ashy, and the lower-parts may be termed fuscousbrown the wing-mark, too, is more albescent in old birds, thus contrasting stronger with the black of the rest of the plumage; while in younger specimens it is much browner. The brown colour of the females is more uniform than is represented on Gould's plate, and the wing-mark is certainly never of the decided rufous hue which is there laid on, having but a faint rufescent tinge, with the margins of the outer coverts dull albescent to a greater or less extent. In the spotted nestling garb, the sexes are already easily distinguishable, from the much darker tone of colouring in the males: besides that, in all the Thrush tribe, the great alars and caudals first put forth resemble in colouring, size, and firm texture, those of the adults, being not shed at the first

moult. This is the common Himalayan Blackbird of the lower ranges, or what is termed the sub-Himalayan region.

17. M. albocincta, (Royle); figured by the name albicollis on Royle's plate, which name was previously applied by Vieillot to a Brazilian species: Turdus collaris, Sorel, Rev. Zool., 1840, p. 2. Size and proportions of the last species: the male black, tinged with brown underneath; throat and fore-neck white, surrounding the ear-coverts, and forming a broad collar round the neck: bill yellow, with dusky tip; and legs yellowish. Female brown, paler below; the collar greyish-brown, and throat white with some dusky spots, and a line of the same from the corner of the lower mandible. The White-collared Blackbird is confined to a greater elevation on the Himalaya than the preceding species.

18. M. nigropileus, (de la Fresnaye); described in M. Adolphe Delessert's Souvenirs d'un Voyage de l'Inde, Pt. II, p. 27. Length about ten inches, of wing five, and tail four; bill to gape an inch and a quarter, and to forehead an inch; and tarse an inch and threesixteenths. Cap, including lores and cheeks, black; chin washed with the same: the back and rump, wings, and tail, dark fuscous-ashy, tinged with brown on the interscapularies: the neck all round, and the underparts, ashy-brown, paler on the belly, and passing to white at the vent under tail-coverts mingled white and ashy: bill, and apparently round the eye, yellow; and legs yellowish-brown. Female altogether paler, the white of the vent spreading over much of the abdominal region, and the cap dusky-brown instead of black. Inhabits the Neilgherries, and is occasionally met with on the eastern ghats.

19. M. brachypus, nobis: Black-crowned Thrush, Latham, from Ceylon. This bird is almost exactly similar to the female of the last, except that the dark cap is less pronounced, and the abdominal region and under tail-coverts are merely pale: but the tarse is remarkably short, not exceeding an inch; and the tail is perfectly squared, whilst in M. nigropilea its outermost feathers are three-eighths of an inch shorter than the middle ones. These two characters are so marked that I have no doubt of its distinctness. It was obtained, I believe, in

the Neilgherries, by Mr. Jerdon.

20. M. simillima, (Jerdon), Madr. Journ. No. XXV, 253. Smaller than the English Blackbird, with longer bill, and yellow legs: the

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